Fox Cities Book Festival: Connecting writers and readers across our diverse communities.

Lynne Diebel grew up in southern Minnesota, and since 1974 she and her husband Bob have lived in Wisconsin, where they raised their four children. Her many books are centered on the landscapes and natural world of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Lynne’s dad taught her to paddle a canoe on flat water when she was a child. Well into adulthood, she and Bob learned to canoe whitewater rivers, and together they paddled almost 3,000 miles on the rivers of Minnesota while researching their two guidebooks, Paddling Northern Minnesota and Paddling Southern Minnesota. Those river miles were always downstream, and they often thought about doing some upstream paddling—like the Native Americans and voyageurs did from necessity—exploring the landscape on its network of rivers. Lynne’s most recent book, Crossing the Driftless, recounts their twelve-day canoe trip from Faribault, Minnesota, where her original family has had a summer home on Cedar Lake since the 1800s, to their Wisconsin home in Stoughton, one block from the Yahara River. It’s a journey across the Driftless, from one home to another, some upstream paddling required.